SOLUTION FOUND - When I added the -d option to my command line, the resultant binary may be launched by inetd.
Perldoc pp does not go into much detail on this option. But contrib/docs/where_is_it.txt gave me the clue to find the answer. Thanks Anonymous Monk.

POST-MORTEM -
I suspect that my problem was caused due to Perl being installed on the target machine. When I build with dependencies the binary does not launch correctly (perhaps due to a library ambiguity?). When I rebuild without dependencies, the library is loaded and my program runs.